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Bookkeeping Machines

Remington Rand

Remington Rand bookkeeping machines, like others, reflect the combination of ideas from several sources. In 1903, a St. Louis company began manufacturing an adding typewriter invented by Hubert Hopkins, the brother of William Hopkins of the Moon-Hopkins billing machine. James Dalton gained control of the firm, moved it to Missouri, and sold both adding and bookkeeping machines under the Dalton name. Meanwhile, the machinist John C. Wahl of Chicago and his associates took out several patents for improvements for adding and subtracting attachments for typewriters. These devices were incorporated in some Remington typewriters. Wahl soon turned his attention to manufacturing pens and mechanical pencils. In 1920, he sold his adding machine patents to Remington outright.

In 1927, Remington, Dalton and several other office machine companies merged to form Remington Rand. A long line of Remington Rand bookkeeping machines followed. The company also would take an interest in tabulating machines and then, as Sperry Rand and then Unisys, in computers.

Remington Rand bookkeeping machines, like those of several other American manufacturers, are the result of corporate mergers of the 1920s. The Remington Typewriter Company of Ilion, New York, sold a combination of its typewriter with an adding mechanism attachment made by the Wahl Company of Chicago in the early 20th century (see 2000.0106.01). From 1916 it marketed these products as “bookkeeping machines.” The Dalton Adding Machine Company of Norwood, Ohio, produced an adding machine with a wide carriage that could post entries and compute daily balances, but had limited typing capabilities.

In 1927, Remington Typewriter merged with Rand Kardex, Dalton, Baker-Vawter Company and the Powers Accounting Corporation (a maker of tabulating machines) to form Remington Rand. The firm soon produced a new line of electrified bookkeeping machines, of which this is an example.

The machine has a row of ten tabulator keys across the front, a row of digit keys behind them, a space bar behind this, and then three rows of a QWERTY typewriter keyboard. It has a wide carriage with a toothed metal bar that has 14 sliding mechanisms on it. Eight of these are “vertical totalizers,” sets of dials that show totals accumulated in different columns of the machine. Six of them show no digits. In addition to the vertical totalizers, there are two fixed registers on the right under the carriage that combine totals entered in the moving registers. The machine has a two-color ribbon and an electric cord.

After World War II, the office machine company Remington Rand invested heavily in the production of electronic computers, purchasing the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company in 1950 and delivering the first UNIVAC computer to the U.S. Bureau of the Census the next year. Meanwhile, Remington Rand continued to manufacture typewriters, adding machines, tabulating machines and products like this one, a bookkeeping machine.

The gray machine rests on a gray metal stand. At the front is a row of plastic tabulator keys numbered from 1 to 10, and two switches. Behind these is a row of digit keys numbered 1 to 9 and then 0. Behind these are a space bar and a typewriter keyboard. The square plastic keys have what appear to be paper stickers on them indicating numbers and letters. Behind the keyboard are five levers. There are two registers, each of which accumulates 10-digit totals. The machine has a wide carriage, a two-colored ribbon, and an electric cord.

A metal label on the object reads: REMINGTON RAND INC (/) MADE IN U S A..

Remington Rand Corporation merged with the Sperry Corporation in 1955 to form Sperry Rand.